Mission offers young Army officer a lesson about life on the front lines in Afghanistan
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This story has been corrected
JALREZ VALLEY, Wardak -- Second Lt. Branden Irvine lay awake all night thinking about it. His second mission, looking for a fight. The good-luck coin hung above his bed, and he looked at it and remembered. It was a gift from his ex-girlfriend’s mother, so not exactly Hollywood romantic, but it was there and it would do.
Yet luck could not calm his mind.
Irvine surveyed the details of the mission and surveyed them again. Set up an ambush. Catch the Taliban unprepared. Kill them.
He imagined scenarios. He wondered how he would do. “If this.” “If that.”
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I do this with everything.”
By morning Irvine had not slept but he had war-gamed his way out of Wardak and beyond Combat Outpost Garda to who knows where, and there was nothing left to do but pull on his uniform and get breakfast.
A little over an hour later, Blue Platoon, Bravo Troop, 3/89 Cav, 4th Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, walked out into the valley along Highway 2, passing the school that sat below their base. Children had just arrived for classes, their voices were ringing in the bare concrete rooms.
A stitch in time
This valley in northwestern Wardak, a green vein of orchards and cropland some 40 miles southwest of Kabul, had been relatively quiet since the 10th Mountain Division took over eight and a half months ago, officers here say. But violence picked up toward the end of May and rose steadily through June and into July.
Explosive ordnance disposal techs were finding more bombs along the highway, the second most important road in the region, and there was more shooting at coalition and Afghan forces. A soldier from one of Irvine’s sister units had been shot through the chest a few days before. He lived; it was a reminder of the stakes.
American officers said the wave of violence could be arriving with warm weather and the so-called fighting season. Or maybe it was a Taliban surge in reaction to the American one. They believed the Taliban were sending a message. We’re still here, we’re still in this.
The squadron commander, Lt. Col. Phillip Chambers and COP Garda commander Capt. Jason Lopez had decided to push back. Lopez said the division’s mission in the area was twofold: Expand the bubble of relative calm surrounding Kabul into nearby provinces, and secure Highway 1, the primary link between Kabul and Kandahar.
In the larger scheme, the Jalrez Valley and Highway 2 formed a crucial east-west tributary. If Kabul’s security zone could be pushed through the Jalrez, it would meet another bubble in Bamiyan, one of the most secure provinces in Afghanistan and one of the first planned for handoff to Afghan control.
Military planners could look at the map and daydream of merging bubbles, or coalescing inkblots, whatever term was in vogue. Any way you explained it, Bamiyan and Wardak lay close to the capital and stitching them together would greatly improve conditions in the country’s core.
Enter Irvine and the scouts of Blue Platoon. Part one of their mission was plain: Visit a trio of villages in the valley, meet with local elders, ask questions, try making friends. Standard counterinsurgency protocol in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Part two was harder. Set up an ambush for the insurgents who regularly attacked a nearby Afghan police outpost. Kill them, if possible. Send a message: You can’t win here.
This is what kept Irvine awake.
Just over a week earlier, the blonde 23-year-old from Philadelphia, N.Y., had been leader of Chambers’ personal security detail at sprawling FOB Airborne, farther east. He joked it was “an armored limousine service.” This was his first tour overseas. He had been in Afghanistan for three months and only once been under fire. Many of Blue Platoon’s sergeants had deployed multiple times, and they had been in the Jalrez more than half a year.
“I thought I did pretty well during that first [firefight],” Irvine said. “But I know some of the guys have seen a lot more fights than me. They asked me if I liked it and I said I didn’t know. They said, ‘That means you did, sir.’ ”
He grinned. “I guess it’s true. But you never know.”
‘This is a good sign’
The first village, Zawyalat, lay just south of COP Garda, across Highway 2. Spc. Mike Jones led the platoon into the fields beside the river and down along earthen berms and walls of irrigation ditches. In the distance, bare, brown mountains rose sharply toward 10,000 feet, making the valley’s wetness feel like a luxury.
The men pushed through wheat fields and plots of hill potatoes, past dense stands of marijuana. As they entered Zawyalat, a small boy stood beside the path, giving each man a high-five.
The platoon’s Afghan translator, nicknamed “Blossom,” said, “This is a good sign.”
None of the elders was home; they were tending fields or off elsewhere. So Irvine sat with a young man named Ashiqullah while his men took up defensive positions. Ashiqullah ran back to his home and returned with a silver teapot, several glasses and a plate of cookies. He offered refreshments to every soldier within reach.
Irvine asked Ashiqullah about his crops, and the number and health of his children. The weather. Then he asked about insurgents.
“Do bad guys ever come through here?”
“Never,” Ashiqullah said.
It was an answer Afghans would give all day long, and one they have given coalition forces for years. Soldiers sitting close to the conversation snorted in disbelief. But in a region where locals don’t always trust their neighbors and fear Taliban reprisals if they speak with coalition forces, Irvine admitted the answer could at least be considered practical.
But Ashiqullah did talk candidly about one problem: the police who manned a local checkpoint. He said the police were outsiders and bullies who stole from villagers and shot at them as they tried to irrigate their fields at night.
Irvine’s face tightened.
“I’ll talk to them today,” he said. “We’ll get them to stop.”
Ashiqullah thanked him. The men shook hands. Jones led the platoon again through fields and deep orchards, the early apples still small and hard, the first red blushes just appearing on their skin.
Blue Platoon visited two other villages through the afternoon. In both, elders sat and spoke with Irvine. In both, the mood was reserved, if not cold. The meetings were short, no one offered tea.
Mostly the elders listed their grievances. All of them asked about a man who had been killed recently in the valley by American snipers. Irvine said the man had been shot while planting an IED, but few of the Afghans believed it. So you say, they replied.
One man accused the Americans of ruining crops when they walked through his fields during patrols. Another, a village representative to the government, said the Americans always made promises and never delivered.
Irvine felt his newness glowing. He backpedaled, became defensive. He could not answer for everything that had come before. In the end, the representative relented.
But he, too, complained about the police from the checkpoint. The elder explained his farmers were too frightened to irrigate their fields in darkness — an important time when temperatures drop and less water is lost to evaporation — because the police, thinking them insurgents, sometimes opened fire. He added that none of the police was from the local area.
“I’m going to talk to them today,” Irvine said. “I’ll fix it.”
“If you do something about that checkpoint,” the man replied, “that will be doing a lot.”
It sounded like a challenge, and an opportunity.
In the late afternoon Blue Platoon wound up out of the valley’s green embrace and hiked goat trails toward the police checkpoint. It sat alone above the highway, removed from the villages, a pile of dirt-filled Hescos and razor wire with a three-story yellow metal watchtower at its center.
Lopez, Irvine’s boss, explained that the former police commander in charge of the checkpoint had been so disliked that locals had told the Americans they were planning to kill him. Lopez worked behind the scenes to have the man transferred.
“He was sort of old-school,” Lopez said. “A fist is better than a handshake, that sort of thing.”
But the commander had been removed in the spring, and Lopez was puzzled by the Afghans’ complaints.
“I don’t always understand where they’re coming from,” he said. “I think these are old complaints that just keep coming up.”
But Lopez acknowledged that too few police from the community had been recruited.
“We’re working on that,” he said. “We’ve got 45 applications in for these guys. We’re gonna hire 100. We’re just not there yet.”
As Blue Platoon walked into the checkpoint and dropped their body armor and packs in the shade, the image of rogue cops faded. The soldiers were greeted by policemen who looked barely old enough to join the force. They smiled and offered tea, tried out a few words of English or simply stared at the Americans and their gear.
One man appeared no older than 16. He later said he was 19, and, as if to prove his competence, demanded the soldiers watch while he shimmied barefoot up a metal post to the top of the watchtower.
Most of the nine policemen were Hazaras and Tajiks. It was true, they weren’t from this Pashtun-dominated section of the Jalrez. But neither did they appear capable of brutality and thieving, Irvine said. The policemen said they rarely left their checkpoint, except to buy food at the local bazaar.
Complicating Irvine’s earlier promises, no commander was present, and none of the young cops held enough rank to address the villagers’ complaints. Irvine briefly lectured them, told them they had to behave professionally, but he would have to wait, or go through other channels to make good on his words to the elders.
Strategy, sleep and food
Sgt. John LaPlante, the acting platoon sergeant, had meanwhile been looking over the landscape, thinking about the next part of the mission: the ambush.
The men had planned to remain at the checkpoint until just before dusk, then filter out in the last light so they could avoid being seen by enemy spotters. They would take cover in a wadi, hoping to create the illusion that they had returned to their outpost, and, later, in darkness, they’d move quietly to a nearby hilltop. There they would wait until the Taliban attacked the checkpoint and catch them from behind.
LaPlante, 23, didn’t like the hilltop. Enemy fighters could outflank the position and climb another hill behind it, gaining higher ground and a clear line of fire. A long shot, maybe, but possible.
LaPlante was a veteran of three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, well-liked and well-known by the soldiers. He brought his concerns to Irvine, and the two agreed on another plan. They’d walk away at dusk, then circle back later to the checkpoint and wait within it. The compound’s blast walls provided better cover and offered insurgents no chance to outmaneuver.
Blue Platoon’s soldiers were relieved at the change. It meant less risk, sure. But there were other benefits, the kind soldiers sometimes consider more important than danger. Some of them might get to sleep, for one. More importantly, they thought about food.
Back at COP Garda, cooks had planned to grill T-bone steaks for dinner that night. Out on their 24-hour patrol, Blue Platoon would miss the barbecue. Who knew when another would come?
So the soldiers pooled their cash and asked the Afghans to go for groceries at the local bazaar. The Afghans agreed, and returned with stacks of nan or flatbread, baskets of vegetables and a sackful of fresh beef. One of the translators agreed to cook.
A big man from Portsmouth, N.H., Sgt. David Molleo, was ecstatic. He talked of becoming a food critic after his tour was up. Every few minutes he stuck his head in the police cook room, observing, assessing, salivating.
“Dude,” he said. “Did you see all the garlic they have? And the onions? This is going to be so awesome.”
Dusk sank down from the mountains and Blue Platoon filed out of the police checkpoint to set their trap. They descended into a wadi and settled among the rocks. No one spoke. There was only the occasional rattle of loose stones as a soldier shifted his weight.
After 45 minutes, they rose again, snow-pale figures in the light of a half-moon, and hiked back to the checkpoint. The rich scent of beef stew poured over them.
Dinner was nearly ready.
‘They haven’t lost yet’
By 10 p.m., the soldiers had taken up positions within the police compound. Several sat on the Hesco walls, scanning the landscape with night-vision equipment. The rest sat or lay on the ground, wrapped in poncho liners, waiting for violence. A wind that had risen in the afternoon grew powerful, hurling grit, slowly stealing warmth.
At 10:30, they heard the first shots. A burst of rifle fire. Not too far off. The men scrambled, tugging on their armor and helmets, searching for the source.
More rifle shots, followed by the deeper sound of a machine gun. Men on the walls could see muzzle flashes. Irvine took a call on his radio. Insurgents were attacking the police checkpoint just down the road.
The gunfire lasted a few minutes. Irvine said it was loose, uncommitted, as if the attackers were merely registering displeasure. No one was reported injured.
Below the Hesco wall, LaPlante said the chances of insurgents firing on his position were now very low. They rarely attacked twice in one night, he said.
He laughed and shook his head, as if he didn’t think much of the enemy’s tactics.
“It’s amazing sometimes that they would pick a fight with the U.S. Army,” he said. “But you know, they been doing this all their lives, and they haven’t lost yet.”
The men settled down again, rotating through shifts of guard duty and fitful rest in what had become a cold night. Some men huddled together beneath their poncho liners.
Irvine sat with his radio, listening to the scattered traffic and the intermittent jokes of his men. As the night deepened, it became clear that his chance would not come. The Taliban had shown up, just not in the right spot. A hazard of ambushes.
“I wanted to take it to them,” he said, shrugging.
Near dawn, in the distance, an EOD team cleared an IED from a culvert beneath Highway 2. It had contained a propane tank and two jugs stuffed with perhaps 100 pounds of homemade explosive.
The boom served as an alarm clock. Blue Platoon rose stiffly and filed out of the checkpoint toward the rising sun, toward home. Molleo was still talking about dinner.
Later that morning, before he dropped into bed, Irvine spoke of mixed feelings. He didn’t want his men to get hurt, but he was disappointed the ambush had failed.
“I feel like we accomplished a little bit yesterday. But whether there was a lot of progress …” he let the words hang. “I think that’s why they have new lieutenants like me doing this. Because we’re not too burned out on it yet.”
Correction
Capt. Jason Lopez's name was incorrect.
